Hello friends! Long time no blog. I hope you all are well! We have been busy around here making our house a home and prepping for a new addition to our family coming in February.

My kiddos couldn't be more excited! My son asks every morning if the baby is done growing yet. :)

So what brings me out of the woodworks this time? Well, firstly, I do love sharing with all of you here on the blog, seeing what you are doing. Between my new freelance work (which I love) and my growing family (which I love even more), this little blogging hobby of mine has just gotten a little lost most days.

And secondly, when Minted contacted me and asked if I'd review their holiday card collection... I couldn't resist. I love fun and fresh designs, and Minted has great designs for cards, personalized art prints, journals, and pretty much anything you could want to print.

I personally love sending and receiving photo cards, because I love seeing how we all change over the years, especially the kiddos. I have saved all of our holiday cards from the last 3-4 years and bring them all out with our Christmas decorations, so we have a sort of time-warp Christmas card display on our door where you can see babies getting all grown up! Love it.

So, I headed straight for the photo cards. The site is easy to navigate to find exactly what you want -- holiday cards, Christmas cards, New Years cards -- and once you're to the area you want, it's easy to narrow down the field by the number of pictures you want, flat vs folded, and even the photo orientation. I always end up falling in love with a card that has the photo turned the opposite direction of our one good everyone-smiling family photo, so I really love that feature!

You can also choose from their selection of shaped cards (most square/rectangle cards can be personalized to have the shape/edge style you want) and even choose a specific color, so your card will coordinate with your photo.

I insist on having my husband's input approval on our Christmas cards. [That's how we spend our Friday nights, me designing and him pretending he has an opinion ;)] He hates trying to choose a card that has someone else's face on it. So the Find It Fast feature was awesome! With Find It Fast, you just upload your picture and it puts it into the cards so you can easily browse through and see how your photo looks in many cards without having to actually go through the personalizing process for each one.

Using the Find It Fast feature

Minted has a global community of designers for their products, and the designers really cover their bases. For example, most cards come in multiple color schemes. It's disappointing to find a card design that you love and have the color of text blend in to your photo and disappear -- so with different color schemes that doesn't have to happen!

I spent a lot of time just browsing the collection -- because the collection is HUGE! They have a great variety of designs and styles. They even have a section of cards that are foil pressed -- real shiny foil accenting your cards! So pretty. They also have cards specifically for newlyweds and new babies -- and even a few for dog lovers :)

One of my very favorite features of Minted is that most everything is customizable. I can be a little bit... particular... about some things design-wise so I love that I can change a saying or font easily. And if you are even more particular than I am, you can have Minted's designers help you with additional design tweaks.

And have you ever picked out a perfect card and then had the "Merry Christmas" end up right across someone's face? With the simple online design interface, you can move the text areas wherever you want and even change the font of certain text areas. And they have a great selection of classy and non-traditional fonts to really help your card be distinctive.

So, my final word: The selection of cards at Minted is a little pricier than you might find somewhere else, but the designs are stellar and not like you'll find most other places. If you want to impress everyone on your mailing list with a personalized, high-quality card with an awesome design, check them out! And if you sign up through this referral link, Minted will give you a $25 credit toward a purchase of $50 or more!